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February 26, 2010
Holy Comforter Parish eNewsletter |
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This Week The Second Week in Lent
During the second week of Lent, the Church celebrates the feasts of St. Katherine Drexel (March 3) and St. Casmir (March 4). For more information about Lent at Holy Comforter, visit the Lent 2010 section of the parish Web site. Bulletin The following are highlights from this Sunday's bulletin. To read the entire parish bulletin for February 28, 2010, view the attached PDF file or click here. NEED FOR ALTAR SERVERS: There is a need for Altar Servers for the 5:00 p.m. Saturday Mass. Individuals should be willing to serve 1-2 times per month. Anyone from 9 to 90 should consider this important ministry. Training will be provided. Please call Jim Morrisard at 973-6570 if you are interested.
STATIONS OF THE CROSS: The Stations of the Cross will begin on February 26th at 6:30 p.m. and will be followed by a simple soup supper. Stations will be held Friday February 26th, March 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th. Your participation is needed. Each Friday two readers, a Cross bearer and two candle bearers are needed. Sign-up is on the credenza. Families are urged to sign up and no experience is needed. Training will be provided. If you have any questions, call Jim Morrisard at 973-6570. CANTORS NEEDED: We are in need of additional singers to serve as cantors for the 5:00 p.m. Saturday mass and the 8:30 a.m. Sunday mass. Any interested persons should speak to Bill Polhill, Minister of Music or contact him at gwpolh3@yahoo.com.
CCS CONTINUES TO ACCEPT APPLICATIONS: Charlottesville Catholic School (CCS) continues to accept applications for the 2010-2011 school year. Please visit our website for comprehensive information about CCS and for details about our application process. Though applications received by February 23, 2010 (an extension of our Feb. 1st deadline due to weather delays of our Winter Open House) are being considered in the first round of enrollment contract offers, applications received after that date will be considered as seats remain available. If you would like to have a tour of our school, please call Ann Michel, Admissions Coordinator, at (434)964-0400.
BI-PARISH HAITI COMMITTEE: The committee’s next meeting will be announced shortly. Please contact Laurie Duncan for more information. Prayer Intentions The Holy Father's Intentions for February
Missionary: That the Church, aware of its own missionary identity, may strive to follow Christ faithfully and to proclaim His Gospel to all peoples. Pro-Life Prayer Intention For the full conversion of abortion providers who are considering leaving the abortion industry. The Holy Father's Intentions for March General: That the world economy may be managed according to the principles of justice and equity, taking account of the real needs of peoples, especially the poorest. Missionary: That the Churches in Africa may be signs and instruments of reconciliation and justice in every part of that continent. Liturgy Calendar
Devotion
Of all the pious exercises connected with the veneration of the Cross, none is more popular among the faithful than the Via Crucis. Through this pious exercise, the faithful movingly follow the final earthly journey of Christ: from the Mount of Olives, where the Lord, "in a small estate called Gethsemane" (Mk 14, 32), was taken by anguish (cf. Lk 22, 44), to Calvary where he was crucified between two thieves (cf. Lk 23, 33), to the garden where he was placed in freshly hewn tomb (John 19, 40-42). The love of the Christian faithful for this devotion is amply attested by the numerous Via Crucis erected in so many churches, shrines, cloisters, in the countryside, and on mountain pathways where the various stations are very evocative. The Via Crucis is a synthesis of various devotions that have arisen since the high middle ages: the pilgrimage to the Holy Land during which the faithful devoutly visit the places associated with the Lord's Passion; devotion to the three falls of Christ under the weight of the Cross; devotion to "the dolorous journey of Christ" which consisted in processing from one church to another in memory of Christ's Passion; devotion to the stations of Christ, those places where Christ stopped on his journey to Calvary because obliged to do so by his executioners or exhausted by fatigue, or because moved by compassion to dialogue with those who were present at his Passion. In its present form, the Via Crucis, widely promoted by St. Leonardo da Porto Maurizio (+1751), was approved by the Apostolic See and indulgenced, consists of fourteen stations since the middle of seventeenth century. The Via Crucis is a journey made in the Holy Spirit, that divine fire which burned in the heart of Jesus (cf. Lk 12, 49-50) and brought him to Calvary. This is a journey well esteemed by the Church since it has retained a living memory of the words and gestures of the final earthly days of her Spouse and Lord. In the Via Crucis, various strands of Christian piety coalesce: the idea of life being a journey or pilgrimage; as a passage from earthly exile to our true home in Heaven; the deep desire to be conformed to the Passion of Christ; the demands of following Christ, which imply that his disciples must follow behind the Master, daily carrying their own crosses (cf Lk 9, 23). From Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (131-3) At the parish, there is a Stations of the Cross at 6:30 p.m. on the Fridays during Lent from Febuary 26th through March 26th. Lenten Fast and Abstinence Rules Each Catholic is asked to preserve Lent's penitential purpose and character, which begins Ash Wednesday. Therefore:
 Excerpt from the Catechism The Decalogue in Sacred Scripture, Part 2 The Ten Commandments are familiar, but through the Catechism, we can better grasp the tremendous importance of these ten words God first gave to His people through Moses. Part 1 of this section can be read here. 2060 The gift of the commandments and of the Law is part of the covenant God sealed with his own. In Exodus, the revelation of the "ten words" is granted between the proposal of the covenant and its conclusion - after the people had committed themselves to "do" all that the Lord had said, and to "obey" it. The Decalogue is never handed on without first recalling the covenant (“The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb."). 2061 The Commandments take on their full meaning within the covenant. According to Scripture, man's moral life has all its meaning in and through the covenant. the first of the "ten words" recalls that God loved his people first: Since there was a passing from the paradise of freedom to the slavery of this world, in punishment for sin, the first phrase of the Decalogue, the first word of God's commandments, bears on freedom "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." 2062 The Commandments properly so-called come in the second place: they express the implications of belonging to God through the establishment of the covenant. Moral existence is a response to the Lord's loving initiative. It is the acknowledgment and homage given to God and a worship of thanksgiving. It is cooperation with the plan God pursues in history. 2063 The covenant and dialogue between God and man are also attested to by the fact that all the obligations are stated in the first person ("I am the Lord.") and addressed by God to another personal subject ("you"). In all God's commandments, the singular personal pronoun designates the recipient. God makes his will known to each person in particular, at the same time as he makes it known to the whole people: The Lord prescribed love towards God and taught justice towards neighbor, so that man would be neither unjust, nor unworthy of God. Thus, through the Decalogue, God prepared man to become his friend and to live in harmony with his neighbor.... the words of the Decalogue remain likewise for us Christians. Far from being abolished, they have received amplification and development from the fact of the coming of the Lord in the flesh. Church History
The feast day of St. Katharine Drexel is March 3rd. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. on 26 November 1858, Katharine was the second daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel, a wealthy banker, and his wife, Hannah Jane. The latter died a month after Katharine's birth, and two years later her father married Emma Bouvier, who was a devoted mother, not only to her own daughter Louisa (born 1862), but also to her two step-daughters. Both parents instilled into the children by word and example that their wealth was simply loaned to them and was to be shared with others. Katharine was educated privately at home; she traveled widely in the United States and in Europe. Early in life she became aware of the plight of the Native Americans and the Blacks; when she inherited a vast fortune from her father and step-mother, she resolved to devote her wealth to helping these disadvantaged people. In 1885 she established a school for Native Americans at Santa Fe, New Mexico. Later, during an audience with Pope Leo XIII, she asked him to recommend a religious congregation to staff the institutions which she was financing. The Pope suggested that she herself become a missionary, so in 1889 she began her training in religious life with the Sisters of Mercy at Pittsburgh. In 1891, with a few companions, Mother Katharine founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. The title of the community summed up the two great driving forces in her life—devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and love for the most deprived people in her country. Requests for help reached Mother Katharine from various parts of the United States. During her lifetime, approximately 60 schools were opened by her congregation. The most famous foundation was made in 1915; it was Xavier University, New Orleans, the first such institution for Black people in the United States. In 1935 Mother Katharine suffered a heart attack, and in 1937 she relinquished the office of superior general. Though gradually becoming more infirm, she was able to devote her last years to Eucharistic adoration, and so fulfill her life’s desire. She died at the age of 96 at Cornwell Heights, Pennsylvania, on 3 March 1955. Her cause for beatification was introduced in 1966; she was declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II on 26 January 1987, by whom she was also beatified on 20 November 1988. From EWTN Link of the Week Musings of a Catholic
From Catholic Culture. |
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BOOK CLUB: Are you looking for a chance to deepen your understanding of your faith? To share your views with other parishioners? If you are, we invite you to read the book "A Key to The Doctrine of The Eucharist" by Abbot Vonier and to come to the next meeting of the book club on Tuesday, March 2nd from 4:00-5:30 p.m. at 150 Bennington Road. For questions or to get directions, contact Therese Stong at 296-9961 or 
PHILOSOPHY CLUB: The Philosophy Club has moved to daylight hours! We now meet the second Sunday of the month at 12:30 p.m. (right after the 11:00 a.m. mass) in the Bernard Moore Room. All are welcome to join us at any time. At our next meeting, on March 14th, we will discuss St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, Question II and Question III, Articles 3 and 4, on the existence of God. The readings can be found online at 
IMPACT: The Rally is over. We learned what 
PANTRY: If you had trouble getting groceries during the recent snow storms, you were not alone. People who depend on us for help with their groceries also had trouble. Either they could not get to our pantry because we were closed (we are closed when the city schools are closed), or because the busses were running erratically. So now that things are improving, we are more than ever in need of your support. When you go to the store, please remember BOGO (buy one, give one).
EARTHQUAKE UPDATE: Please continue to pray for our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Several parishioners have recently returned from Saltadère Watch for updates and recent pictures at the St. Thomas Haiti table when they return. Updates on relief efforts are being posted on the Saltadère website, 
General: For all scholars and intellectuals, that by means of sincere search for the truth they may arrive at an understanding of the one true God.
